Does Cardio Give You Energy?

by
DAN KETCHUM March 27, 2018

Dan Ketchum

Dan Ketchum has been a professional writer since 2003, with work appearing online and offline in Word Riot, Bazooka Magazine, Anemone Sidecar, Trails and more. Dan's diverse professional background spans from costume design and screenwriting to mixology, manual labor and video game industry publicity.

Heart and Lung Power

Cardiovascular exercise is all about getting the body moving, and as your body moves, your heart pumps more blood. When that happens, your heart delivers more oxygen to your muscles. As your aerobic fitness increases, your body becomes more adept at moving oxygen into the blood, which makes your muscles more efficient — and more efficiency equals less energy usage.

Exercise physiologist Pete McCall of the American Council on Exercise explains that when a sedentary individual starts a workout routine, the activity enhances blood flow and increases the delivery of oxygen and nutrients to the muscles. In the big picture, this process improves the body's ability to produce more energy in the form of a chemical called adenosine triphosphate.

With consistent cardiovascular exercise, those muscles adapt to increased physical workloads until, eventually, day-to-day activities put less demand on the lungs and require less energy to perform.

As your heart's pumping at heightened levels during your cardio workout, your body is also burning through calories. Calorie burn leads to weight loss, and weight loss leads to more energy in the long run. As the Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences points out, there's a direct correlation between obesity, sleepiness and fatigue.

Tips

Cardio also helps you fall asleep faster and get more REM sleep, which can lead to more energized days.

Endorphin Rush

Your heart isn't the only thing your body pumps during cardio — strenuous cardiovascular exercise causes your body to pump out the body chemicals known as endorphins. If you've ever heard of the euphoric "runner's high," that feeling is endorphins at work. The energy outlasts your run, too, bolstering energy levels throughout the day.

If you find yourself with low energy due to depression, low-self esteem or just a bad mood, cardio is an effective method for bringing you back up, as it also increases the production of the mood-boosting hormones serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine.